Auctions: Testing The Waters
If you are still in the process of developing your online business perhaps you might try using online auctions sites to get a feel for selling online.
Perhaps you have an interest in a variety of products and you are having trouble deciding which may have the greatest potential. Maybe you have conducted a degree of market research and you’re still not sure. The use of online auction sites can help you gain a clearer understanding of the response to the products you are most interested in.
By purchasing a few of the products you are interested in selling and then ‘reselling’ them online you have a low risk means of learning a bit more about the potential of each product.
Now, I’ll be the first to say this is not fool proof and shouldn’t be used as the sole standard for determining which products or services you ultimately sell, but it can provide some real world data on the sales potential of the products you are most passionate about.
You might be surprised at what connects with those who frequent online action sites. There is a story of a man whose son fell in love with Pepé Le Pew cartoons. The father wanted to find a DVD of the cartoons so his son could watch them whenever he wanted. Having no success in local movie stores the man went online. He found a DVD that contained several episodes featuring the skunk and ultimately paid more than $30 for a used DVD from the Philippines.
In the case of an online auction there may be no guarantee that visitors will get a bargain price, but they do have the option of continuing to pursue the product if they are really interested in it.
There are a multitude of instances each day where a product is purchased on an online auction site for significantly more than its perceived value. The reasons may be sentimental or based in pride, but the truth is online auctions are a unique way to test the waters on you products. In most cases you can set a minimum threshold so you will not be losing money on your trial run.
Many netrepreneurs may be bold enough to move forward with an online business, but for those who want to find a low cost way to analyze the potential for a product an online auction may provide some useful insight.
Auctions And The Traffic Jam
Online auctions have become an online flea market and they are huge. Cars are available at auction online as well as jewelry, antiques and virtually every other commodity you can think of (including famous letters and artifacts). You can even bid on farm machinery in an online auction environment.
I’ve likened online auctions to a global garage sale and I still think that’s a pretty good picture of what it’s like. You simply use cyber cash instead of spare change and you wait for the delivery guy to show up with your treasures.
In a brick and mortar retail store you may have secondary shops where you can send overstock items or discontinued merchandise. In online retail you actually have a unique advantage over your brick and mortar counterpart. Why? Online retailers have a function called ‘online auctions’. The vested interest for online auction sources like ebay is that they have built in fees that help make their business profitable.
You may ask why this is a benefit for online retail. To answer that question let’s take a look at the brick and mortar business. The owner sells overstock product at a sizeable discount to a secondary supplier. There is NO marketing potential in selling extra product at a discount to someone who will not provide you with the ability to increase traffic to your own store. However, this is what most brick and mortar stores do to manage their overstock or discontinued merchandise. Interestingly even brick and mortar stores are discovering the value of online auctions as a marketing tool for their business.
Now to the online business opportunities – If you have overstock merchandise you can use online auctions to sell it. You simply set your minimum threshold for an acceptable bid and wait for bargain conscious consumers to arrive. The reason this method is different is that as a seller you can set your profile to include information about your online store and can even provide some sense of link to your online business.
So, to boil this down as simply as possible – brick and mortar stores give up marketing potential when they sell to overstock companies while their online counterparts look to online auctions to not only sell their excess merchandise, but also drive traffic back to their online store with the potential for additional purchases.
Online auctions provide a perfect opportunity to appeal to price conscious consumers and let them know that you care about keeping prices down for everyone.
The truth is you can sell some of your merchandise through an online auction even if it’s not an overstock item and the reasons have everything to do with marketing your business. You don’t even have to spend lots of time and money on auctioning a few items. Some businesses consider it a part of the cost of doing business because those few items can assist in getting non-traditional buyers to your online portal.
Auctions are a potential goldmine for savvy online business owners. Have you given it a try yet?
Audio Books: At Opposite Ends
Audio books were created to cope with our lifestyle today. People who live in a routine-based life can add a little bit of a twist by listening to them. They can listen to the works of their favorite authors, discover new ways of running a firm or enterprise and even learn a new language. With an audio book in hand, all this is possible without disturbing busy people's normal everyday cycle. Yes, evidently, multi-tasking is the audio book's middle name.
By now, you are probably thinking of getting one for yourself. But before this article will lead you into concluding that audio books are indeed necessary, let us first examine its true nature and think of problems you might ran into after purchasing one. Know the advantages and disadvantages!
Pros:
1. Let's start with the obvious. Like stated in the introduction, audio books are there for busy people to be able to listen to their favorite books or necessary readings. Face it. If you are a book-lover leading a demanding life, the tendency is you get frustrated of not having enough time to read all the books that you want. Try to inject some fun into your hectic schedule by finally finishing a book while completing all your tasks at the same time. Very fulfilling, isn't it?
2. Children love to listen to their parents' bedtime stories. The problem is, sometimes, parents will be too tired to read to their children, what with the tiresome day at work. Try getting an audio book of your child's favorite story. There are some audio books which are fully dramatized, so there are more emotions involved.
3. Blind people and dyslexics can definitely benefit from audio books. Besides, there are only a few best-sellers that have a version for the blind which uses Braille, so you are really better off with audio books.
4. Studying has never been effective with audio books. Try studying using audio books and reading the book at the same time. You will find that you will understand the topic more this way. An unabridged audio book version of the book is the best.
Cons:
1. The problem with audio books is that the durability is a lot lesser, especially in the cases of cassette tapes and CD's. They could easily be damaged with wear, tear and scratches compared to books.
2. Some downloaded versions can eat up a lot of computer memory storage. So before getting one from a website, check your computer's memory firsthand.
3. The size of audio books is also an inconvenience. There is a bigger tendency to lose them. You can lose cassette tapes and even CD's. The risk is even higher if you forget to label them. If you just store audio books in mp3 formats in your computer, then you could lose them if you decide to re-format you computer, most especially if you forget to transfer them to another medium.
Audio Conferencing: Cooler Than Cooler Talk
In this world of industrial globalization and razor thin margins, effective communication is often the only edge in tremendously competitive markets. That was often the mantra in several corporate improvement techniques for the past decade. Now that instantaneous data transmission and communication is at our fingertips, there’s no excuse not to communicate within the team. Oftentimes however, this communication takes place in different time zones and in different countries. Companies are taking advantage of quantum leaps in technology and rightly so.
What’s Your Phone Bill Like?
All these great ways to communicate do not come cheap. It is not called global capitalism for nothing. Global telecommunications companies are fighting tooth and nail for a piece of the large and delectable pie. So you tell your people to communicate, but now they have to communicate cost effectively? No rest for the weary is there?
Every time the offshore branch calls up headquarters for a strategy discussion, your phone bill goes up. Every cellular phone call from your busy and mobile marketing executives is another cost on the balance sheet. The larger the organization, the more people have to talk. And you have to pay for all this?
More For Less
The good news is that audio conferencing systems are a cost effective way of helping your business processes and communications. They also cut down on time costs by aggregating several potential interactions into a single simultaneous call. It involves three or more parties talking to each other utilizing existing technologies. Instead of having your CFO relay a message to the Finance department, you can tell the entire team yourself!
Today, audio conferencing mainly utilizes two main types of technology. The first is the existing telephone infrastructure. The parties to the call are basically dialed in and everyone can speak and listen as if they were in the same room. The other method is using something called VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). In this technique, spoken audio is converted into digital data for transmission over the Internet. In both methods, the audio is routed into a central conference bridge which ties in all the other parties to the call.
Don’t be misled. Audio conferencing isn’t only for large corporations. Any kind of group can benefit greatly from its use. Government units, charitable organizations, and even churches engage in audio conferencing. Even space programs use it when they communicate with people in orbit.
So What IS The Bottom Line?
It should be very apparent that audio conferencing is a very beneficial thing. Call costs are reduced by simple virtue of the fact that less of them need to be made. Such a simple concept. Fancy that. And since everyone is already sitting around anyway, less time is spent on the call which is another cost reduction. Another benefit is the reduction of transportation costs. Your country managers can interact with each other in real time without the need for their physical presence. Bottom line? Anything that improves communications to better accomplish goals is a great thing.
Audio Streaming: Easily Captured
There was a time when it was difficult to distribute audio effectively over the Internet because the software used for listening was hard to come by and hard drive space was limited.
Today Internet users typically have three or more devices that can decode and play audio streams via the Internet. Further software applications can even allow that download stream to be captured for replay.
Thousands of Internet only radio stations are available with thousands of additional broadcasters repeating their terrestrial signal via the Internet. Many broadcasters are venturing into the realm of Internet audio by lending their voices to Internet based radio stations and other audio streams.
The growth of audio streaming is a byproduct of consumer demand and advancements in technology.
As an online business using audio to guide your visitor through your website may be a great first step, but there are so many other uses for audio that may take into account visitors who may be visually challenged.
There are already devices to assist those with poor vision, but if you create pages with audio it can make an enormous impact on those who often feel forgotten.
The use of audio can be a benefit for those who work on a hectic schedule. It may be possible to listen to your presentation while they continue working in another window.
Audio can also be an important element in an increasingly mobile society. For those on the go, the ability to listen to audio may be of more assistance than attempting to read the small print on their cell phone or Blackberry.
An audio stream from a conscientious netrepreneur is likely to meet with the approval of many of your site visitors. Certainly they will have different reasons for having an interest in the audio stream, but the audio remains an important function in site marketing and customer convenience.
The growth of online marketing techniques can move audio streaming from a ‘nice add on’ to a desired form of communication with your prospects and customers. Since it is very easy for consumers to tap into an audio stream you have a unique opportunity to brand your business in ways previously unavailable.
Where once there was debate over the use of graphics on a website now the debate may be centered around the use of audio on a website. Today you find very few websites without graphics. I believe the same will ultimately be true of audio streaming.
Audio Streaming The Future
Is satellite radio the future or just a stepping-stone to something different?
Satellite radio is popular because it airs multiple channels commercial free and is often standard in many new car purchases (with a temporary paid subscription).
HD radio is another method used by terrestrial radio stations to improve their listenership, but very few listeners are spending the money to purchase an HD receiver, which remains largely unavailable.
Let me see if this makes sense. Satellite radio has been problematic because there are still enough people who enjoy FREE radio. Many can tolerate the commercial content in order to hear music they like at no cost.
Many on air hosts who have had satellite radio shows have ultimately sought release from their contract because the total number of listeners remains much smaller than a traditional terrestrial radio network.
Audio streaming as pertains to Internet broadcasting may be the future especially in urban areas where wi-fi zones are prominent.
There are those that argue the point, but one has to wonder if a mechanism that would allow individuals to receive audio streaming in their automobiles might render both satellite and HD radio an obsolete method of audio delivery.
Already consumers can find portable Internet radio players that will record programs for later playback. Again, there are those that indicate any standard mp3 player could do something similar, but in a world where Internet radio could be played anywhere the possibilities for listening choices expands infinitely.
For instance not every audio interest is represented via satellite or HD radio, but listeners have a virtually unlimited choice of audio streams via the Internet.
Home devices are already available that will retransmit an Internet audio stream via a home stereo. Users report enjoying the ability to listen to a program, personality or music they do not have the ability to hear any other way.
The potential for Internet radio is that it benefits existing radio stations as well as Internet audio streaming providers. If, for instance, a family is moving from one location to another, but they have an emotional connection to a regional radio station they can effectively take that station with them.
Most audio streaming providers will tell you they have listeners on a global scale. Because most Internet audio streams are available without a fee this type of audio stream is very similar to traditional radio. It is more commonly available and may be utilized more on an overall basis than satellite and HD radio combined.
People are fulfilling their audio needs through a variety of sources, but the hard times faced by HD and satellite radio may simply pave the way for the next generation of audio delivery.
Internet audio streaming may be a bit like traditional radio in one sense. In order to survive many of them need advertising revenue to keep the service free. This could come in the form of audio advertisements, but it can also come in visual ads on the website or by providing an affiliate link for listeners to purchase the music being played with a percentage of the sale going back to the audio stream provider.
No matter how you look at it the audio stream has to be paid for in some way and Internet providers are finding creative ways to do that as they attempt to make the future an act of the present.